As
one of the oil industry's largest providers of equipment
and supplies worldwide, Halliburton needed someone at
its helm who was capable of winning it major contracts
through political connections. That person was Dick
Cheney, who took over as Halliburton's CEO in
1995. Cheney saw that the company had the complete support
of the government. In the Vice Presidential debate in
the run-up to the 2000 election, Senator Joe Lieberman
(D-CT) remarked that Cheney had done well for himself
as CEO of Halliburton. Cheney responded quickly, "I
can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing
to do with it." However, the record points to the
contrary.

Under
Cheney's watch, the company became one of the largest
welfare "queens," benefiting from at least
$3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured
loans. According to a report by the non-partisan Center
for Public Integrity, one of these loans from the U.S.
Export-Import Bank paid $292 million to Halliburton
for refurbishing a massive Siberian oil field owned
by a Russian firm with alleged ties to the mob. The
alleged mob connections are impossible to prove, but
what is troubling is the fact that the Ex-Im taxpayer-insured
loan reduces the borrower's interest rate while simultaneously
extending the life of the loan's repayment term. No
one can say for sure whether Cheney's career in the
highest offices of government secured such a lucrative
deal with low interest requirement, but the deal does
seem somewhat suspicious given the fact that the company
was near bankruptcy just before Cheney took over as
Chairman and CEO of the company.

The
U.S. Ex-Im bank and its sister U.S. bank, the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation, guaranteed loans over
$1.5 billion in loans since Cheney took over the company.
Compare this with the $100 million in loans during the
five years before Cheney became CEO. Their contracts
also have totaled more than $2.3 billion, double the
$1.2 billion in the five years before 1995 (Center for
Public Integrity, ww.public-i.org).

Dealing
with terroristsIn
2000, Cheney acknowledged that under his watch, Halliburton
had entered into business contracts with Iran and Syria,
both listed on the State Department's list of nations
supporting terrorism. However, Cheney denied Halliburton
or one of its subsidiaries had engaged in business dealings
with Iraq, claiming he enforced a "firm policy"
against doing business with Iraq. But according to the
Washington Post, this was not entirely accurate.

The
Post quotes two former executives at subsidiaries
of Halliburton who claim they had no knowledge of such
a "firm policy." Along with confidential UN
records, they showed that Halliburton held stakes in
two Iraqi firms which signed contracts worth some $73
million in production equipment and parts while Cheney
was head of the company. The deal was done under the
"oil-for-food" program administered by the
UN, and was apparently completely legal, even if not
in keeping with the values of American policy. But documents
released since then have shown that these dealings were
much more extensive than either Cheney or the company
acknowledged.

Cheney,
who oversaw the first Persian Gulf war in 1991 as Secretary
of Defense promised to take a consistently hard line
against Baghdad. He must have forgotten this when in
1998 he engineered the takeover of Dresser Industries,
Inc, which exported equipment to Saddam Hussein in a
joint venture with US equipment maker Ingersoll Rand
Co. Again, the sales were completely legal because they
were under the auspices of the oil-for-food program.
Even so, the Post story (above) demonstrates
that when big businesses like Halliburton are forced
to reconcile an ethical obligation against dealing with
"rogue states" and profits, the latter always
wins out. For Cheney and Halliburton, profit trumps
patriotism.

The
War on TerrorIs
it simply coincidental that Halliburton's profits are
rising rapidly as the United States plunges ever more
deeply into occupying Iraq? Since the end of the Iraqi
invasion, Halliburton has become the recipient of enormous
contracts worth billions of dollars.

According
to Agence France Presse, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg,
Brown and Root (KBR) inked a no-bid contract with the
Army Corps of Engineers in March 2003 to extinguish
oil well fires in Iraq, presuming the work would be
necessary. According to Henry Waxman, a senior House
Democrat who investigated the matter, "the contract
- to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq - has no set
time limit and no dollar limit and is apparently structured
in such a way as to encourage the contractor to increase
its costs and, consequently, the costs to the taxpayer."
Waxman wrote further, "This type of contract is
generally discouraged in the executive branch because
it provides the contractor with an incentive to increase
its profits by increasing the costs to the taxpayer."
In other words, KBR could basically charge whatever
they wanted, and be completely subsidized by Mr. And
Mrs. John Q. Taxpayer. It was not until five weeks after
the deal was disclosed that the American people actually
found out about the contract, according to an article
from the BBC. As of the 8th of September, Halliburton
had earned $948 million for this particular contract.

In
each of the previous articles, they quote spokespeople
from KBR and the Army Corps of Engineers who said that
the deal to cap oil wells and extinguish fires was only
temporary, or as one described it a "bridge"
to future contracts which would be open to more than
one bidder. The article says the Corps "expects
a replacement contract to be signed by the end of August."

There
has not been a replacement contract and now Halliburton
stands to make even more money since George
W. Bush requested from Congress an additional
$87 billion, which Dick Cheney has said would cover
the costs in Iraq for 2003. In an interview quoted in
The Boston Globe, Cheney noted, "I don't
think anybody can say with absolute certainty at this
point" in response to a question about whether
the administration would need more money in the future.
In this same article, Cheney again disavowed any connection
he continues to have with the company: ''Since I left
Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president,
I've severed all my ties with the company,'' he said.
''And as vice president, I have absolutely no influence
of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape,
or form of contracts let by the US Corps of Engineers
or anybody else in the federal government.''

But
some of the sharpest critics of Halliburton's deals
have come from the competitors of the company who would
otherwise stand to gain from lucrative contracts in
the rebuilding of Iraq. They especially criticize the
bidding process which is used to select the winning
bidder for certain contracts. When Halliburton was originally
awarded the no-bid $7 billion contract earlier in 2003,
Congress made the Army Corps of Engineers dismantle
certain parts of that contract because it overtly demonstrated
signs of favoritism. But Halliburton was still contracted
to do some oil repair work. In the bidding process back
in August, many of the critics of the contract thought
that this work gave the company a leg-up on its fellow
bidders. As a result, Halliburton could come off as
seeming like the company most able to perform the necessary
tasks. For instance, the two contracts up for bid, formerly
part of the now-rescinded $7 billion contract awarded
to Halliburton, cannot specify the type of work needed
in Iraq because the needs of the Iraqi oil industry
had not completely been laid out. But because Halliburton
has been doing the sort of work required, they have
access to information and data not available to other
potential bidders.

Even
if we were to accept this at face value, there is no
question Cheney has a vested interest in seeing the
company succeed. As part of his severence package from
leaving the firm in 2000 to be Bush's running mate,
Cheney agreed to be paid by the company over a period
of time extending into his current term of office. The
payments show up on Cheney's tax returns as "deferred
payments." An Cheney aide, quoted in the British
daily The Guardian, said "'This is money
that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of
his salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton
and which was a fixed amount paid to him over time.'
The aide said the payment was even insured so that it
would not be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt,
to ensure there was no conflict of interest" (www.guardian.co.uk,
03/12/03). Nevertheless, we find it striking that the
former CEO makes up to $1 million from a company in
which he claims to have no interest whatsoever, yet
whose own administration has given gifts worth nearly
$2 billion.